Movies, notes the New York Times, “rarely deal with issues like the divinity of Christ or the search for the Holy Grail. In the cinema, such matters are best left to Monty Python.”

Don Brown’s tenacious bestseller The Da Vinci Code juggled just such issues in a brisk, entertaining way, the perfect “airplane book,” with all the strengths and weaknesses of the form: breezily (and at times sloppily) written but with a pop-song-like hook that kept you turning the pages, unlocking one puzzle after another, with a few authentic shocks and unexpected twists to its credit.

SPOILER ALERT: Plus there was a smattering of esoteric theology explained in clear, middle-brow language, namely that Jesus had a daughter with Mary Magdalene, the proof for which had been suppressed by the Catholic Church but could be found encoded in the architecture of certain Gothic cathedrals, as well as in the play of symbols in Renaissance paintings. In fact, the bloodline of Jesus continued on to the present day, as one of the characters will discover in a very personal way, and only a secret society has kept the facts alive through the centuries.

Particularly annoying to this reader, though, was the clumsy way Brown described his characters, resorting to such wizened howlers as movie star comparisons: He introduces his hero, a handsome scholar of religious symbolism named Langdon, as a “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed,” drawing the obvious comparison to the Indiana Jones series, where Ford played a similar scholar-detective of mystic artifacts.

The Ron Howard-directed Da Vinci Code could, in fact, have cast Ford as Langdon, but instead chose an overweight Tom Hanks (was Clive Owen too busy? — Owen being both sexy and intellectually intense, not to mention younger than Hanks.)

The lumbering, looks-like-corseted, Tom may have provided the visual cue — and certainly, the visual aide — for the Hollywood Reporter’s devastating overview of the film:“unwieldy, bloated melodrama … a jumble of historical myth, religious symbology and international thriller-action.”

The Times put it even more pungently: “And what’s up with Tom Hank’s hair?” The actor seems to be wearing a mullet — or is that a Franz Liszt-Professor Snape comb-back in the photo above?

Here then is a tart sampler of today’s pans:

CNN, on the much-ballyhooed, red-carpet premiere at the Cannes Film Festival:

At Cannes, one scene during the film, meant to be serious, elicited prolonged laughter from the audience, and when the credits rolled, there was no applause, only a few catcalls and hisses. Things were no better Stateside, where the film screened for critics in New York.

The Cannes reaction amazed one witty poster on the all-gay Datalounge Forum:

To be an anti-Catholic, conspiracy movie and the French critics STILL didn’t like it! It must really be a mess.

Variety:

A pulpy page-turner … has become a stodgy, grim thing. …Sitting through all the verbose explanations and speculations about symbols, codes, secret cults, religious history and covert messages in art, it is impossible to believe that, had the novel never existed, such a script would ever have been considered by a Hollywood studio.

Part of the quick deflation is due to a palpable lack of chemistry between Hanks and [his leading lady] Audrey Tautou … Howard, normally a generous director of actors, makes them both look stiff, pasty and inexpressive in material that provides them little opportunity to express basic human nature … nor to say anything that doesn’t relate directly to narrative forward movement.

The New York Times:

The Da Vinci Code is one of the few screen versions of a book that may take longer to watch than to read. (Curiously enough, Mr. Howard accomplished a similar feat with How the Grinch Stole Christmas a few years back.) … The albino monk, whose name is Silas, … may be the first character in the history of motion pictures to speak Latin into a cell phone.

Through it all, Mr. Hanks and Ms. Tautou stand around looking puzzled … Mr. Hanks twists his mouth in what appears to be an expression of professorial skepticism, and otherwise coasts on his easy, subdued geniality. Ms. Tautou, determined to ensure that her name will never again come up in an Internet search for the word “gamine,” affects a look of worried fatigue. ..Not even a glimmer of eroticism flickers between the two stars. Perhaps it’s just as well. When a cryptographer and a symbologist get together, it usually ends in tears.

Time Magazine:

It’s not very good — long (2hr.32min.) and mostly inert… [Ron Howard] seems propelled more out of duty than love for the project. He drags along the audience as if he were a guide who’s led this tour for years and is doing it by rote …

Well, despite my cataloging of the movie’s faults, I’m not among the smirkers. …There was speculation that the filmmakers might shy from the Opus Dei subplot, or at least from naming the group. One wag suggested that, given the character played by the child actor Ronny Howard on The Andy Griffith Show, he might re-dub it Opie Dei. But no, he charged ahead, calling it by name and depicting the society in exactly as harsh a light as the book does. Expect protests.

And finally this from Betty Bowers, “America’s best Christian” as she describes herself on the spoofy Betty Bowers website

The Da Vinci Code is a wildly contrived story about how the forbidden love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the Brad and Angelina of Judea, was revealed by Renaissance fresco-paparazzi …

As an unwavering Republican, I have quite naturally burned more books than I have read. As such, I seldom read any fiction not found between the bejeweled covers of the Bowers’ family Bible. Nevertheless, believing that anything that infuriates Catholics can’t be all bad, I finally closed my autographed Bible long enough to read The Da Vinci Code. I must say that Dan Brown’s book proved a delightful change of pace. After all, the entire volume has far less gratuitous sex and dismemberment by psychotic zealots than even the first chapter of the Bible …

I find, however, that my forgiving ability to overlook cinematic flaws is not without limits…Take, for instance, Tom Hanks, who plays Robert Langdon. …Friends, we are talking about a face that will frighten more people away from the consequences of booze than MADD’s most graphic Teenager Through a Windshield public service spot could ever hope to accomplish.

Poor Audrey [Tautou], a full 20 years Hanks’ junior and thereby slightly older than Hanks in Hollywood years, is left with the thankless task of bedding such an unsightly man …

Heck, for all that, I’m still going to go see it. And so, I bet, are you.